My Day

From the issue dated August 8, 2003

Richard Shusterman, 53, a philosophy professor at Temple
University, is experiencing a sort of reverse culture shock. He
has just returned to Philadelphia from a year at Hiroshima
University, where he pursued his work on "somaesthetics," a
body-mind discipline that he has been developing since 1997.

At the request of The Chronicle, he kept a diary one day in
July.

4:28 a.m. My dream of gliding over the soft
green islands of Japan's Inland Sea abruptly ends as I taste the
salt of perspiration dripping down my face. I'm not naturally an
early riser, but am jet-lagged and disoriented. No hope of
falling back to sleep; too hot and too fraught with the anxieties
of resuming life as department chair, a job I never really
wanted. The antique charm of our Victorian townhouse has turned
into dysfunctional disarray. The third-floor air conditioner is
broken, so my wife, Erica, and 2-year old daughter, Talia, share
a bed in the cooler room a floor below. Three in the bed won't
work, especially since Talia is used to sleeping on a futon posed
flat on a tatami-covered floor. I shower and tiptoe downstairs to
check on her and brew some tea.

4:55 Just thinking of all the things I have to
do sets my mind and heart racing, but I can't risk waking my
sleep-deprived family. A dynamic new dean arrived while I was in
Japan, and she authorized three new tenure-track searches for our
department this year. But we have to make the hires much earlier
than usual, so I must disturb faculty members with committee work
during summer break. I'm unprepared for such pressures. In
Hiroshima I was a well-paid but entirely ornamental research
professor with no teaching duties. No one dared knock on my door.
Here everyone wants a signature or a solution. This afternoon
I'll meet our dean for the first time. Can I match her energy and
meet her expectations? Do I even have a clean set of appropriate
clothes in my still-unpacked cases?

Be calm and breathe deeply, I tell myself, recalling a mondo
posed to me by the Zen master in whose remote hilltop dojo I
received my meditation training. "How many steps do you take from
your room to the meditation hall? Though the distance was 30
yards, "one step" was the answer, since the focus should be
wholly on the present moment in which each individual step is
taken, rather than on overwhelming thoughts of all the many other
steps, past and future. I take my meditation cushion, a treasured
souvenir from my stay at the dojo, and began to sit, focusing
attention on each breath to quell my wild thoughts of house
repairs and university administration. They can wait at least
till dawn. Far from the bamboo forests, the daybreak song of
cheerful city birds.

5:55 My old runner's knees, still bent in the
half-lotus, are now too sore to sustain meditative depth, and I'm
getting hungry too. Talia and Erica are stirring on the second
floor.

6:15-8:15 We breakfast, as in Japan, on rice,
eggs, fermented soybeans, pickled plums, and seaweed salad. It's
familiar comfort food for Talia, and she needs that sense of
continuity. My trials of readjustment cannot compare to her
culture shock, and as long as she's unsettled, none of us will
sleep or thrive. Japan was her whole world and Japanese her
primary language. Erica, of Japanese descent, speaks it fluently
and helps Talia retain it. After breakfast, while Erica is
running errands, I do my part by showing Talia videotapes of her
favorite kids' programs from Japanese TV. American TV can
wait.

8:30-11:30 Arrive at the office and scan through
e-mail. No emergencies yet, but two exciting items: another
speaking invitation from Europe that I'll probably refuse since
I've already booked too many talks this fall. How many will I
have to cancel because of our hectic hiring schedule? My Chinese
translator sends a review of my book in a major Shanghai daily. I
open the attachment but can't see any Chinese. I realize I need
special software and call computer services. Short huddle with
the secretaries to plan the logistics of our hiring campaign.
Write drafts of the hiring ads and send them out by e-mail for
comments from my faculty. E-mail correspondence with the local
Barnes & Noble to set up fall dates for the meet-the-author
philosophy series I lead there.

11:30-12:30 p.m. The computer guy arrives with
the new XP software and with a new computer capable of running
it. I leave him my office and visit the colleague who did a
wonderfully meticulous job as acting chair in my absence. He has
a stack of files of past and ongoing business for me to consult.
We strategize about the hires and our graduate program. I'll look
at the files over lunch at my desk.

12:30-2:30 Vegetable lo mein from a food truck
downstairs. Not enough protein or taste, but the feel of
chopsticks and noodles is comforting. Open the acting chair's
files and feel a shudder of spiritual death. Shove the files in a
drawer. Process incoming suggestions to the job ads I drafted.
Erica phones about Talia's lunch, nap, and two-year molar
teething, then I talk with a colleague from Vanderbilt about a
follow-up to an NEH summer seminar on American pragmatism we ran
a couple of years ago. My secretaries inform me that our urgent
Staples order cannot go through because my university credit
authorization expired while I was away. A chain of phone calls
and faxes solves the problem.

2:30-3:30 Too much commotion in the chair's
suite, so go to my old office down the hall to work on my
introduction to a collection of articles soon due at the
publisher. The desk is cluttered with a year's accumulation of
unexamined journals, catalogs, and books. I sigh and sweep them
briskly to the floor.

3:30-5:30 Prepare to meet the dean. I'll ask for
more flexibility with the rank of some of the hires. Remind
myself not to bow when meeting her. It could be misconstrued.
Fruitful session with the dean. Return to my desk to sign some
documents and prepare the job ads for electronic postings.

5:30-6:15 Start cleaning up my old office but
despair and go home.

6:30-9:00 Take Talia for a walk while Erica
prepares dinner. Playtime and bath with Talia. I lie down beside
her to tell her a bedtime story but keep dozing off, though she
prompts me to continue.

10:30 Erica gently wakes me and we move to a
futon on the floor to cuddle and talk. Or am I dreaming
again?

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